The fraud banks

A few years ago, I saw a movie called ‘The International’ which I thought was utterly stupid and waste of time. The movie did not have a character as a villain. The villain in the movie is an institution – a bank!

But the more I think about it and the increasingly nefarious activities that some of the big banks have been caught doing, the more I am convinced the banks are indeed the root of all evil in our society. To make matters worse, in a world where money is everything, the elected officials, our executive and judicial branches of governance are afraid to punish banks forall the evil they indulge in.

Here is a comprehensive list of wrong doings by banks and their consequences to society!

Goldman Sachs Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won

Goldman was able to profit from the collapse in subprime mortgage bonds in the summer of 2007 by short-selling subprime mortgage-backed securities. Two Goldman traders, Michael Swenson and Josh Birnbaum, are credited with bearing responsibility for the firm's large profits during America's sub-prime mortgage crisis. The pair, members of goldman's structured products group in New York, made a profit of $4 billion by "betting" on a collapse in the sub-prime market, and shorting mortgage-related securities. By summer of 2007, they persuaded colleagues to see their point of view and talked around skeptical risk management executives. The firm initially avoided large subprime writedowns, and achieved a net profit due to significant losses on non-prime securitized loans being offset by gains on short mortgage positions.

HSBC Money Laundering

HSBC acknowledged compliance lapses, including a failure to maintain effective anti-money laundering program, and conducting transactions on behalf of customers in Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya and Sudan, which were all subject to US sanctions.

HSBC punishment included a $1.26bn forfeiture and $665m in civil fines. 

Libor Scandal

The Libor scandal was a series of fraudulent actions connected to the Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) and also the resulting investigation and reaction. The Libor is an average interest rate calculated through submissions of interest rates by major banks in London. The scandal arose when it was discovered that banks were falsely inflating or deflating their rates so as to profit from trades, or to give the impression that they were more creditworthy than they were

On 27 June 2012, Barclays Bank was fined $200 million by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, $160 million by the United States Department of Justice

A farce concern for privacy!

Fox News Reports - Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft are part of a broad alliance of technology companies and civil liberties groups that will demand dramatically increased transparency around U.S. government surveillance efforts.

For so long these companies were aware of this issue, and have had no problem in providing data to the NSA. They have been happy to spy on us and watch our lives.

But now that we know that they have been secretly doing this, suddenly they have the balls to write an open letter to the government and show how concerned they are about the privacy of the public and email accounts!

Slimy bastards! Fearing public backlash and the fear of loosing members suddenly they want to be the torch bearers of liberty and privacy.

Which is the best website for remitting USD to India

This question pops up in the brain of all desis when it comes to remitting money home. Nobody wants to miss out on the best remittance rate. So i have put together a plot of the remittance rate tracked on the few of the most popular websites over the last four months.

While tracking this over the last 4 months, the INR has depreciated significantly thus allowing me to track the flexibility of all these services in adapting to the changing rate.

One thing to note is that these are indicative rates advertised on the website and actual rate may vary.

Few key observations from this are:

SBI seems to be the least reactive to the exchange rate. It is possibly due to their website updates not keeping pace with the INR activity.

ICICI Money 2 India and Axis Bank services seem to be delivering the best exchange rate consistently.

How Republicans keep alienating the future!

They are opposed to gay marriages!

They want women to have babies they don't want by banning abortion!

They are opposed to immigration / immigrants who will keep coming in and eventually become citizens / voters, no matter what!

and now they are making lives difficult for students, who will eventually become responsible citizens and think of who caused them the suffering and financial hardships!

Subsidized Stafford loan interest rates went to 6.8 percent on Monday because Congress didn't strike a deal to keep them low. That translates to an extra $2,600 per student in costs. It affects roughly a quarter of all federal borrowers.

The well educated upper / middle class students traditionally are republican supporters, but the Republican hardliners in Congress are hell bent up on aggrieving them as well!